


Currents

by tamaerchen



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, F/M, Gen, prologue characters, the world is ending but they've got each other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-18
Updated: 2016-03-18
Packaged: 2018-05-27 10:58:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6281845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tamaerchen/pseuds/tamaerchen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Saku is "dying" again and Aino has to accept that the world is indeed ending - luckily they've got each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Currents

Of course Saku had caught a cold. It had taken them the better part of an hour to coax him inside and now he was lying with his head in Aino’s lap, sniffling. They were on the sofa in the upper part of the boat, while the rest of the family had gone downstairs and to bed. Up here, the swell wasn’t as prominent as underdeck and now that they had moored in a sheltered cove for the night, the boat was swaying gently on the lake. Aino was starting to doze off, lulled in by the sound of waves lapping against the hull and the light, floating feeling she had come to associate with the comfort of a family vacation. (Eino hadn’t become a boat painter by chance. Nautical professions where somewhat of a family tradition and they had been going out on their grandfather’s boat every summer ever since she could remember.)  
  
“Atshii!”  
  
Aino was promptly brought back to the present by Saku’s sneeze and subsequent groaning. She pulled the blanket Tuuli had brought up for them over his shoulder and patted his head.  
  
“How are you feeling, sweetiepie?”  
  
“Still dying.”  
  
She couldn’t help but smile at the predictability of his answer. She put a hand on his forehead as if feeling his temperature and put on her customer service voice: “I’m afraid we’ll have to keep you here on this weary earth for a while longer, Mr Hotakainen. The tests have come back and while they confirm that your condition is indeed terminal, you’ll have another couple of decades to live.”  
  
Saku responded with a small chuckle that ended in a small cough. “I suppose I’ll have to trust your professional judgment, doctor. But how will I tell my wife that she will have to care for me for all that time?”  
  
“I’m sure there’s nothing else she’d rather do. After all, you’re her favourite person in the world.”  
  
“Now, there’s no need to coddle me just because I’m dying.”  
  
“I wouldn’t dare coddle you!” She took one of his hands into hers and placed a kiss on its back. “I mean it.”  
  
Saku pulled down her hand and returned the gesture. He looked up at her, wearing a more serious expression. “I love you more than anything and I am so incredibly grateful that I’ll get to spend the rest of my life with you.” He turned his head and placed a careful kiss on her belly. “And you.”  
  
He made to sit up and draped his arm around Aino’s shoulder along with the blanket, the other he placed over their child. Aino leaned towards him, so that her forehead touched his and whispered: “Me, too.”  
  
  
\---  
  
Helmi hadn’t opened the restaurant back up after a week, nor after another. By the third week, they hadn’t been able to reach her anymore; Aino was the only one who had insisted to try anyways. She had desperately tried to enforce the agreement that no one was to talk about the end of the world in her presence after it had turned out that Veeti already knew more than anyone else and that the end of the world wasn’t just a crazy idea anymore.  
  
She wasn’t as naïve as her family might have thought, she was just desperately trying to keep it together. They tried their best to make her feel comfortable, but at some point, avoidance just wasn’t a practical strategy anymore. Of course, she could always play the pregnancy card… no, she couldn’t even bring herself to joke about it these days. The due date was relentlessly creeping closer and what was supposed to be the happiest moment of her life had turned into a looming terror. Nevermind the sauna delivery (although she did mind, quite a bit) – how could she bring a new life into a world like this? It broke her heart to think of her child growing up amidst sickness and devastation, being a refugee, trapped inside by the horrors looming all around them…  
  
“Start dropping dead like flies” – she hadn’t even be able to take Tuuli’s words seriously then. It was such a ridiculously callous way of talking about the lives of actual people – people she knew, people she cared for… but she had to acknowledge that the expression had turned out to be accurate. She fought to keep back the tears and quickly excused herself.  
  
She barely made it around the corner of the stairs leading under deck when she broke down. The sobs came from deep within, shaking her whole body and forcing her to sink down onto the steps. It felt like she was caught in a stormy sea, dark green waves crashing over her head, forcing her down, foam at the mouths. She fought to keep herself above the surface, gulping for air at irregular intervals, lungs hurting –. Cool fingers wrapped themselves around hers and it felt like she was being pulled up from the crushing depths. She could make out Saku kneeling before her, just a blurry outline through the tears. Suddenly exhausted, she collapsed against him and let herself be held. Now that she felt safe, she realized just how much this daily fight for composure, for survival had drained her.  
  
His breathing was slow and his hand steady as he stroked her back, whispering soft words into her hair while her head lay on his shoulder, eyes closed. She was about to drift off to sleep, but she feared that all she would encounter were more nightmares.  
  
“Saku, I am afraid.”  
  
“I know, love. Me, too.”  
  
“But –”, she felt the desperation well up inside her again. “How can you be so calm?!”  
  
“Shhh…” He ran his hand over her hair and tilted back his head, so he could look at her face. “I don’t know what is happening out there and I don’t know how to stop it. But I know that I am lucky enough to have the two most important people in my life right here with me and I know that I will do everything in my power to protect them.”  
  
This was too much. She had somehow managed to find a husband who was not only the most dramatic hypochondriac around but also had the most comforting arms and in all earnest declared his love as if he was in a Hollywood movie while around them the world was ending. She would have laughed if it wasn’t all so fucking terrible. And so she buried her face in his jumper instead, soaking the fair isle pattern with fresh tears.  
  
Saku kept holding her until she had run out of tears, and after that. After a while he spoke again: “You know, I have been thinking and… I think Toivo would be a good name.”  
  
“Yes, it would”, she whispered and smiled before she finally fell asleep.  
  
_Toivo_ , this was something that she could hold on to.

**Author's Note:**

> I got this idea while I was transcribing the Finland part of the prologue and realized that while Aino is the one who knows how to deal with Saku's hypochondria, Saku would probably deal with the death of most of the population and the collapse of society better than Aino. In a catastrophe, a pessimist might just turn out to be the most positive person around...


End file.
